Unified Earth Government
"Humanity can now breathe again. The Covenant has finally been driven back. The cost in lives - our troops and our citizens - has been enormous. But freedom never comes cheaply, and now, we rebuild. I promise this to every man, woman and child on Earth and in its colonies. While we will continue to strive for a peaceful coexistence with other species, humanity will never again allow itself to be the victim of aggression. This is the moment we start to reclaim our rightful place in the universe." -Dr. Ruth Charet, President of the Unified Earth Government The Unified Earth Government (UEG) is the central civilian government that administers Earth and its colonies in the Earth-4576 universe. Governing a small portion of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, the UEG is made up of the Colonial Administration Authority (CAA), the United Nations (UN), and most prominently its military branch, the United Nations Space Command (UNSC). The UEG spent its early decades dealing with insurrection and rebellion before the arrival of the Covenant threat, an alien conglamerate that vowed to exterminate humanity. The Human-Covenant war was a long and brutal campaign for survival for humanity; during this time, it was necessary for the UNSC to assume the governing function to help save humanity from extinction. Following the end of the Human-Covenant War, governance returned to civilian authority, which is currently making a focus on colonial recovery and reconstruction, stabilization of multiple conflicts throughout the Orion Arm by dealing with various hostile factions, and exploration and expansion throughout the stars in the advent of the discovery of Forerunner relics, most prominently the Halos. Early History Formation The Unified Earth Government traces its origins back to the early days of human colonization of the Sol System in the late 21st century. The organization was originally created by the United Nations in 2075 as an assembly of political leaders and brilliant minds and tasked with attempting to avert the crises of the next century by solving governmental unification issues of colonizing non-Earth territories and beyond. Despite the efforts of the government, numerous instances of uprisings and infighting would rise in the near future, lasting for decades in a series of bloody campaigns collectively referred to as the Interplanetary Wars. Jovian Moons Campaign The Jovian Moons Campaign was a conflict that took place on the moons of Jupiter between the United Nations and the Frieden movement, from March to June 2160. The campaign would become one of the deadliest conflicts to ever take place within the Sol System despite its shortness, and served to only escalate tensions between governments and factions. The conflict served to strengthen the anti-government and anti-corporate sentiment growing among colonists. The campaign led to mass militarization among Earth's nations—many of which sponsored colonies within the system—as they began fighting proxy wars off-planet. With the campaign's end, conflict within the Sol system ceased for several months, with some speculating that the worst had passed. Rainforest Wars However, violence was still fresh and sprung again in 2162, this time in South America on Earth in the Rainforest Wars, a ninteen-month-long series of bloody conflicts between Koslovic and Frieden forces. Additional guerrilla attacks took place across Earth on military and nonmilitary targets, along with several concurrent off-planet skirmishes. The fighting lasted from February 2162 to September 2163. Mars Campaign The Mars Campaign was a pivotal military campaign undertaken by the United Nations against human rebel forces on the planet Mars in December 2163. The campaign marked the beginnings of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), and the dedicated usage of large forces of Marines in space-to-ground attacks. The campaign was an unquestionable success for the Marines, and as a result future military doctrine favored large contingents of Marines for ground assaults and ship-boarding actions. Interplanetary War The Interplanetary War, also referred to as the Last Interplanetary War,was a large armed conflict waged throughout the Sol System between 2164 and 2170. It was fought among the United Nations, the Neo-Communist Koslovics, the fascist Frieden backed by corporations of the Unified German Republic, and a number of other national governments. The fighting was the culmination and final conflict of the Interplanetary Wars. The war saw the first military applications of bioaugmentation protocols, already used outside the military to adapt humans to the conditions of space and different colonial habitats. These augmentations would serve as an early precursor to the enhancements used in later Supersoldier projects. After the war, the United Nations succeeded in absorbing most territorial and extraterrestrial governments into itself, the goal being to form a unified governing body which could combat terrorists and stabilize Earth and its colonies. Thus, the Unified Earth Government was formed, with the recently created United Nations Space Command serving as its primary military, scientific, and exploratory force. In 2204, the Unified Earth Government gained full autonomy in order to maintain Earth's power over humanity's numerous interplanetary colonies. Despite the end of the wars, the UNSC were forced to deal with a less obvious but equally serious threat: overpopulation and a massive military that has no enemy to fight. The post-war period saw massive population surges that, coupled with the destruction and famine bred by the Rain Forest Wars, threatened to destabilize the interplanetary economy. Worse, humanity would not be able to expand beyond the confines of the Solar System until nearly two centuries later, with the discovery of Slipspace travel in 2291 by Doctors Tobias Fleming Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa. With this, the subsequent formation of the first Inner Colonies occurred in 2362. Through Interstellar Colonization, humanity would enter a new golden age, with its massive population stabilized across many off-system worlds and goods transported to Earth from the colonies. Insurrection The Insurrection is the proper name given to an undeclared civil war fought between the UNSC and various loosely organized groups of rebels, collectively known as the Insurrectionists, over control of the Outer Colonies, which began in the year 2494. Originally, the breakaway movements started as disquiet against the Colonial Administration Authority's oversight of the Outer Colonies, with the colonists tired of the organization's often overbearing bureaucracy. It first started as peaceful protests, and after years of frustrating negotiations, some groups began to use more forceful methods, eventually abandoning diplomacy in favor of terrorist tactics. Initially confined to a few systems, the fighting spread across human-controlled space in only several years; as the conflict escalated further, even some Inner Colonies, including the Epsilon Eridani and Sol Systems as inward worlds were targeted by rebel militants and terrorists. What had once been widespread support for the Insurrectionists quickly dried up at the outbreak of violence. Though they started out targeting only military and Colonial Administration targets, as the UNSC counterinsurgency operations began, more and more innocent people were caught in the crossfire. The Insurrection claimed millions of lives between the late 2490s and the mid-2520s. The various rebel groups had become extremely adept at creating improvised explosive devices difficult for the UNSC to detect, and therefore stop, and had struck many high profile targets. Some opponents of the war believed the simplest solution was to simply give the rebels their autonomy - for the UNSC to pull out, and let the rebels have their independence. However, the value of the colonies made them simply too important to abandon, as it would bankrupt the Inner Colonies. Though the primary fighting would die down over the years, tensions between the UEG and the Rebel factions never ended as several small incidents continued to pop up from time to time. However, the importance of the Insurrection conflict would be overshadowed in the wake of a much more dire period of danger, as a new threat arose to challenge peace across Earth's colonies; not simply a fight against ideals or territorial occupation, but one of pure and utter survival. Human-Covenant War The Human-Covenant War, also known as the Covenant War, the Human-Covenant Conflict, and the Great War, was a major interstellar conflict pitting the United Nations Space Command against the Covenant during the mid-26th century between February 11, 2525 and December 11, 2552. The war was instigated by the High Prophets of the Covenant, who declared a holy war of genocide against the human species. There were two additional factions sporadically involved in the conflict: the Flood and a small number of surviving Forerunner Constructs. (Will place the main beef of the war in an upcoming page: UNSC.) After the ceasefire was declared, the Great Schism that split the Covenant apart continued in the form of several wars between various Covenant members for several years to come. While the Covenant factions collapsed into infighting, the UNSC itself had to deal with a resurgence in the Insurrection. Post-War Era "When the Covenant War started twenty-eight years ago, we did not know what to think, or how to react. After decades of war, we could have grown used to such terrors as these. Instead we refuse ourselves that callousness. We pause and acknowledge what we have lost. We remind ourselves of what it is we continue to live for. And that is our strength as a people." -Dr. Ruth Charet In January 2553, Dr. Ruth Charet took office as the President of the Unified Earth Government. She called for a new era of peace, progressiveness, and rebuilding in the wake of the Covenant War. While the UNSC did not require the approval of the UEG to assign budgets, the UEG was slowly beginning to regain its power and the government began to focus on reconstruction. By January 8 2553, the Unified Earth Government formally regained its power back from the UNSC. After this, the UNSC experienced difficulty in shedding its former governmental tasks. In light of this, a shadow government of sorts has formed within the Unified Earth Government—largely directed by the Office of Naval Intelligence and its own bureaus. As the UNSC continues to retain considerable influence on the colonies, many individuals outside the Sol system believe that the UEG is merely an ineffective front for a military government. The UEG and UNSC moved to retake several colonies that had been abandoned during the war, while others were reconstructed. Draco III held strategic importance during this mission, as many other colonies beyond were lost in the war. The UEG afforded greater autonomy to a number of megacorporations – approving militarization of their security forces and greater exploitation of colonial subsidiaries in the name of stability and reformation. In the years following the war the UEG was involved in irregular battles against resurgent human insurgencies as well as Covenant Splinter Groups. Government/Politics The Unified Earth Government functions as a representative democracy. Much like the former United States (Now the United Republic of North America after combining with Canada and Mexico), the UEG is headed by a Presedent, maintains an Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, and has a Senate, referred to as the United Earth Government Senate. A number of other executive offices exist, among them the Minister of Information, Secretary of Defense, and Minister for the Colonies.The Department of the Treasury operates the Internal Revenue Service, and the Inner Territories Transportation Administration has authority over the security of public interplanetary and interstellar travel among the Inner Colonies. The Colonial Administration Authority is the government branch that administers the various colonies that belong to the UEG. It keeps extensive files on every colony world and city under the UEG, available to UNSC members for planning missions. While the UEG is formally a union of independently governed worlds, Earth is in a privileged position over the colonies in the election process, which has been a source of discord with some colonials. Some colonies are managed by Planetary Governors that lead a world's parliamentary government. Even though it originally formed the UEG, the United Nations has been absorbed into a branch of the Earth government by the 26th century. Its role has been reduced to mediating various administrative tasks between Earth's similarly vestigial governing bodies. Foreign relations Prior to first contact with the Covenant at Harvest in 2525, the Unified Earth Government kept no foreign relations with aliens due to the lack of knowledge or evidence of sentient extraterrestrial life. Instead, the UEG focused on Insurrectionists on rebellious colonies, whose independence was not recognized. However, after the Covenant War, tensions remain as the UEG must again deal with elements of the weakened Insurrectionist movement, with worlds like Venesia actively seeking to secede. The United Rebel Front has proven to be one of the most organized and effective insurgent factions to the UEG's power, throughout the 26th century and even continuing to be a formidable force and significant threat after the Covenant War. The URF has successfully managed to take control of several UEG colonies—at least temporarily—during and after the war. However, the UEG generally left the URF alone, unless the group attempted to violently secede a world from its control. Some Outer Colonies maintain a tense relationship with the Unified Earth Government, as they felt abandoned by their government and its military branch during the Human-Covenant War. While some colonies attempt to withdraw from the UEG through violence, others are slowly attempting to become autonomous and end all dependence on the government by forming their own militaries. The UEG and UNSC is constantly on alert for radical independence movements seeking to take advantage of these power vacuum. As of 2553, the UEG is working on building a truce with the Sangheili of the former Covenant Empire. Under the leadership of Arbiter Thel 'Vadam, a sizeable leftover of Sangheili veterans seek to stabilize the infighting among various clans and powers on their homeworld while also helping to establish a permanent peace across the other races left behind by the Covenant fall. An official peace treaty was ratified between the Humans and the Sangheili in February of 2553, signed by 'Vadam and Fleet Admiral Lord Terrance Hood. Economy The UEG uses the United Nations Credit (cR) monetary unit to organize its economic stability by selling or buying military equipment, supplies and costs for shipping, etc. The UN cR was implemented by the United Nations at some point before the formation of the Unified Earth Government in 2170. For transporting food and raw materials between colonies, the UEG maintains a merchant navy, run by the Department of Commercial Shipping. Trade between colonies is seemingly managed and regulated by the Trade Alliance. The Inner Colonies often relied on the Outer Colonies for resources. While Inner Colonies like Reach, Mars, or Tribute served as military strongholds with strong industrial capacities, the Outer Colonies generally provided mining and agricultural supplies. This precedent became troublesome for the UEG after most of the Outer Colonies were destroyed in the Covenant War, leading to Inner Colonies being required to produce their own resources. Outer Colonies suffered from increased trade restrictions and taxes that were established by the Colonial Military Administration, factors that eventually led to the Insurrection. Trade with one colony could be halted through a vote, as was the case with Aleria when the Inner Colonies halted trade with the world during its economic collapse caused by a century-long drought. Military The United Nations Space Command is the UEG's primary military, exploratory, and scientific arm. The UNSC is intended to protect colonists and colony worlds from attack by pirates, Insurrectionists, and alien threats such as the Covenant. It includes various conventional and special forces, and is traditionally made up of four branches mimicking the former United States Military: the UNSC Marine Corps, the UNSC Navy, the UNSC Army and the UNSC Air Force. The UNSC maintains a number of scientific organizations, including the UNSC Engineering Corps and UNSC Astrophysics. During a period of critical danger in which Earth and its colonies are threatened, the UNSC can receive full operational autonomy from the UEG; during the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC even took over administrative control from the UEG until the war's end. The UEG's member nations maintain their own standing militaries. While they are generally equipped and authorized to deal with local incidents of a minor note, the UNSC will step in and take charge for more important incidents. During these times, militia forces are expected to follow orders issued by UNSC leaders. Sphere of Influence Human-occupied systems are known to encompass a small radius of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy in various stages of colonization, from the well developed Inner Colonies to the relatively recent and struggling Outer Colonies. By 2490 there were over 800 worlds under human control, ranging from small outposts and settlements to thriving colonies and military strongholds. Most of the colonies under the influence of the UEG were under the direct governance of the Colonial Administration Authority. Originally military oversight for the colonies was provided chiefly by the Colonial Military Administration, though the UNSC eventually usurped its duties due to widespread corruption in the CMA's ranks. The UEG's and UNSC's rapid colonial expansion efforts led to a massive, unexpected setback at the dawn of the Human-Covenant War. Influence over these worlds was greatly reduced by the Covenant during the war, with only Earth and a few scattered colonies left mostly intact by the end of the conflict in 2553. Since the end of the conflict the UEG has worked to restore its galactic territories and avoid secessionism.